PENCIL DRAWINGS
A portrait is far more than just a recorded representation of a particular person. They have been used to show the power, importance, virtue, beauty, wealth, taste, learning, psychological state or other qualities of the sitter.
TITLE: PORTRAIT OF SALMAN RUSHDIE
June 2020
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The portrait, pencil on paper, of Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born British-American novelist and essayist, is influenced by the hyperrealism drawings of the artist Dirk Dzimirsky. Dzimirsky's works capture the very essence, emotion of what it means to be human.
Rushdie's work, combining magical realism with historical fiction is rooted, and concerned, with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilisations.
TITLE: ACCEPTANCE, PATIENCE AND PERSEVERANCE
January 2017
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Pencil on paper drawings, Card mosaic tiles 2018.
The portrait of a young African girl was submitted for consideration to the RA Summer Exhibition in 2017. This submission was shortlisted for the Second Round of judging. In the same year it appeared in an interview on the BBC2: Royal Academy 2017 Summer Exhibition programme.
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The portrait is based on an image by the photographer George Rodger in the book Humanity and Inhumanity: The Photographic Journey of George Rodger, titled “Wachimbiri Girls of the Impenetrable Forest of Kigezi” taken in Uganda in 1948. Rodger takes this striking picture of a young African child. The photograph shows the young girl looking thoughtful, defenceless and slightly vulnerable.
Rodger's photographic image is reimagined, in this work to portray her with an air of confidence, dignity and strength. In today’s modern world we view Africa as a “hopeless continent” full of conflict and famine, degrading Africans as a people who are solely dependent upon the charity of the Western world. The halo around her signifies that she is also worthy of being considered as divine. Is she not like Eve in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam created in God’s own image? This work attempts to wrestle from Western Art the idea that God was exclusively a White European and that he is applicable to each and every human.
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TITLE: PORTRAIT OF KARL MARX
January 2020
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Portrait, pencil on paper, of Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.
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SOCIALIST APPEAL
[Join The fight for Socialism]
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TITLE: PORTRAIT OF LENIN
January 2020
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Portrait, pencil on paper, of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist.
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TITLE: WOMAN AND HANUMAN
January 2020
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The portrait, pencil on paper, of a Mumbai nomad and monkey, is after an image taken by the photographer David de Souza in the book Itinerants, published by Charmayne And David De Souza.
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Hanuman is a Hindu god and divine vanara companion of the god Rama. Hanuman is one of the central characters of the Hindu epic Ramayana.
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TITLE: PORTRAIT OF CLR JAMES
July 2024
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The portrait, pencil on paper, of Cyril Lionel Robert James a Trinidadian historian, journalist, Trotskyist activist and Marxist writer.
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James is the author of the 1937 work World Revolution outlining the history of the Communist International. Read it here!
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